Here at UR we absolutely adore simplicity. The truth is not always simple, it's true. But the lies are always complicated. And there are so many lies! Even in this historic golden age of bullshit, is it possible to oversimplify? To steal a line from Hunter Thompson, it's possible for a Hell's Angel to catch the clap, too. He doesn't waste much time worrying about it.

But America has so many problems! No, she doesn't. America has only one problem: America is a communist country.

And has been since before you were born. And probably before your mother was born. Earl Browder was right: communism is as American as apple pie. Russia didn't infect America. America infected Russia. After which the germ went back and forth a few times - as we'll see. It eventually died out in Russia, which is nice because that just leaves us. How simple!

Alas, this beautiful, simple, horrifying reality is simply too difficult for most Americans to grasp, let alone do something about. If you tell an American of any political persuasion that his is a communist country, the poor fscker will simply laugh in your face. Cancer, that's so funny. Of course I couldn't possibly have cancer. Yes, there's this thing - it's just a growth...

If you love your American, don't let him get away with it! Don't let him wallow in his denial! Hit him straight in the teeth with a fast overhand right. "Of course America is a communist country," you can say. "You just have to translate. For workers and peasants, read blacks and Hispanics."

Now this is a zinger, but it's just a zinger. One little zinger never cured anyone. It gives you something to work with, that's all. Your interlocutor, if there's any hope for him, may be a sharp fellow himself. He might punch back with a zinger of his own. For example, he could say: "oh, yeah? So tell me, smart guy, on what day did America become a communist country?"

Whereupon some might be stumped. But you, dear UR reader, have an answer. America became a communist country on December 20, 1933. Was there transmission of saliva? Oh, yes, there was transmission of saliva.

I say "at a bare minimum," because the published edition (1972) of William Bullitt's letters to FDR was edited by Bullitt's brother, Orville, with assistance from George Kennan. Orville's elisions (which I've marked OB) are frequent, especially at the juicy moments. Do they conceal even more... "intimate..." revelations? It's clear that nothing really juicy could remain, but even what's left is... remarkable. I've of course made my own cuts, which conceal nothing.

In addition to the report of my trip to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics which I shall submit to the Secretary of State, I should like to set down for your own eye some of the more intimate episodes.[...]Berlin[...]I avoided seeing any officials of the German Government, but "Putzi" Hanfstaengl, Hitler's intimate assistant, called on me and talked in his customary irrational manner, saying among other things, "Of course you and I know that the Jews make all wars and are the sole beneficiaries of all wars." I disagreed. The most fantastic thing which has happened in Germany lately is the christening of the new military academy "Ernst Roehm Kadetten Erziehungs Anstalt." In view of the revelations about Roehm, the English equivalent would be the renaming of Sandhurst "Oscar Wilde Institute."

U.S.S.R.[...]On Wednesday, December 13, at noon, I presented my credentials to Kalinin at the Kremlin.[OB ...]I had a delightful conversation with Kalinin after presenting my credentials. I had never met him and I had thought from all that I had read that he was a simple-minded old peasant, but he is far from simple-minded. He has a delightful shrewdness and sense of humor.

He asked me to say to you that he was following with the closest attention everything you were doing in America, and that he and everyone else in Russia considered you completely out of the class of the leaders of capitalist states; that it was clear to them all that you really cared about the welfare of the laboring men and the farmers and that you were not engaged in protecting the vested rights of property.[...] [OB ...]Even the party press of the Communist Party which hitherto has been uniformly hostile to Ambassadors unearthed various remarks of Lenin about me from his "Testament" and various speeches. Apparently he really liked me and expressed his liking many times. In view of Lenin's present position in Russia, which is not unlike that of Jesus Christ in the Christian church, this is a bit like having the personal endorsement of the Master recorded in St. Mark. Divilkovsky, for example, said to me, "You cannot understand it, but there is not one of us who would not gladly have his throat cut to have had such things said about him by Lenin."[OB ...]There was one [OB building site] which was not offered to us, but which we offered to ourselves: a bluff covered with beautiful woods containing a lake overlooking the river and the whole city of Moscow in the center of the great city park. It is a situation which suggests Monticello, and I can conceive of nothing more perfect for an American Embassy than a reproduction of Monticello in that setting with houses for the entire staff of both consulate and embassy arranged along the sides of the property. We were not modest in our demands, but asked for the entire bluff containing some fifteen acres of property. The Moscow Soviet continued to offer us other building sites, any one of which would be adequate but none of which compared in interest or beauty to this site.[OB ...]That night Litvinov, with whom I had previously had several meals in private, gave me a formal dinner to which nearly all the members of the Government were present. It was a superb banquet with food and wines of a quality that no one in America would dare to serve nowadays, and many toasts were drunk to you and to me and to the United States.[OB ...] [...] [OB ...]The men at the head of the Soviet Government today are really intelligent, sophisticated, vigorous human beings and they cannot be persuaded to waste their time with the ordinary conventional diplomatist. On the other hand, they are extremely eager to have contact with anyone who has first-rate intelligence and dimension as a human being. They were, for example, delighted by young Kennan who went in with me.[...]Litvinov said to me as I looked over the room, "This is the whole 'gang' that really runs things -- the inside directorate." I was introduced to Stalin after I had shaken hands with Kalinin and Molotov, but made no effort to continue conversing with him before dinner, considering it best to let him come to me in his own good time. He drifted to one side of the room and I to the other.[OB ...]The first impression Stalin made was surprising. I had thought from his pictures that he was a very big man with a face of iron and a booming voice. On the contrary, he is rather short, the top of his head coming to about my eye level, and of ordinary physique, wiry rather than powerful. He was dressed in a common soldier's uniform, with boots, black trousers and a gray-green coat without marks or decorations of any kind. Before dinner he smoked a long underslung pipe, which he continued to hold in his left hand throughout dinner, putting it on the table only when he needed to use both knife and fork. His eyes are curious, giving the impression of a dark brown filmed with dark blue. They are small, intensely shrewd and continuously smiling. The impression of shrewd humor is increased by the fact that the "crow's feet" which run out from them do not branch up and down in the usual manner, but all curve upward in long crescents. His hand is rather small with short fingers, wiry rather than strong. His mustache covers his mouth so that it is difficult to see just what it is like, but when he laughs his lips curl in a curiously canine manner. The only other notable feature about his face is the length of his nostrils. They are unusually long. With Lenin one felt at once that one was in the presence of a great man; with Stalin I felt I was talking to a wiry Gipsy with roots and emotions beyond my experience.[...]As soon as we had settled ourselves at the table Stalin rose, lifted his glass and proposed a toast "To President Roosevelt, who in spite of the mute growls of the Fishes dared to recognize the Soviet Union." Everyone drained his glass to the bottom and sat down again with considerable laughter at Stalin's reference to Ham Fish. I then proposed the health of President Kalinin and thereupon a series of toasts was begun which continued throughout the entire meal. The next one was Molotov's to me in which he proposed "The health of one who comes to us as a new Ambassador but an old friend."

After the tenth toast or so, I began to consider it discreet to take merely a sip rather than drain my glass, but Litvinov, who was next to me, told me that the gentleman who proposed the toast would be insulted if I did not drink to the bottom and that I must do so, whereupon I continued to drink bottoms-up. There were perhaps fifty toasts and I have never before so thanked God for the possession of a head impervious to any quantity of liquor. Everyone at the table got into the mood of a college fraternity banquet, and discretion was conspicuous by its absence. Litvinov whispered to me: "You told me that you wouldn't stay here if you were going to be treated as an outsider. Do you realize that everyone at this table has completely forgotten that anyone is here except the members of the inner gang?" That certainly seemed to be the case.

Stalin proposed my health several times and I did his once and we had considerable conversation across Madame Voroshilov. Toward the end of the dinner Stalin rose and proposed the health and continued prosperity of the American Army, the American Navy and the whole United States. In return, I proposed a toast "To the memory of Lenin and the continued success of the Soviet Union."[...]After dinner we adjourned to an adjoining drawing room and Stalin seized Piatakov by the arm, marched him to the piano, sat him down on the stool and ordered him to play. Piatakov launched into a number of wild Russian dances, Stalin standing behind him and from time to time putting his arm around Piatakov's neck and squeezing him affectionately.

When Piatakov had finished playing, Stalin came over and sat down beside me and we talked for some time. He said he hoped that I would feel myself completely at home in the Soviet Union, that he and all the members of the Government had felt that I was a friend for so long, that they had such admiration for yourself and the things you were trying to do in America that they felt we could cooperate with the greatest intimacy. I told him that you sincerely hoped that war might be prevented in the Far East and that the Soviet Government might work out its great experiment in peace. He said, "I know that that is what President Roosevelt wants and I hope you will tell him from me that he is today, in spite of being the leader of a capitalist nation, one of the most popular men in the Soviet Union."

Stalin was feeling extremely gay, as we all were, but he gave me the impression he was speaking honestly. He had by this time made the impression on me of a man not only of great shrewdness and inflexible will (Lenin, you know, said of him that he had enough will to equip the entire Communist Party), but also possessed of the quality of intuition in extraordinary measure. Moreover, like every real statesman I have known, he had the quality of being able to treat the most serious things with a joke and a twinkle in his eye. Lenin had that same quality. You have it.

As I got up to leave, Stalin said to me, "I want you to understand that if you want to see me at any time, day or night, you have only to let me know and I will see you at once." This was a most extraordinary gesture on his part as he has hitherto refused to see any Ambassador at any time.[OB ...]After I had said good-bye to Voroshilov and the others, Stalin went to the door of the apartment with me and said, "Is there anything at all in the Soviet Union that you want? Anything?" There was one thing I wanted, but I hesitated to ask for it, as Litvinov had told me that the Moscow Soviet had definitely decided it would not give us the building site in the center of the town's park, and that a map would be submitted to me showing that the new canal would run through the center of the property. Therefore I first said, "Everyone has been more than kind to me and I should hesitate to ask for anything in addition, except that the intimate relations we have begun tonight may continue."

Whereupon, Stalin said, "But I should really like to show you that we appreciate not only what the President has done, but also what you yourself have done. Please understand that we should have received politely any Ambassador that might have been sent us by the Government of the United States, but we should have received no one but yourself in this particular way." He seemed moved by a genuinely friendly emotion.

Therefore, I thanked him and said that there was one thing I should really like to have, that I could see in my mind's eye an American Embassy modeled on the home of the author of the Declaration of Independence on that particular bluff overlooking the Moscow River, and that I should be glad to know that that property might be given to the American Government as a site for an Embassy. Stalin replied, "You shall have it."

Thereupon, I held out my hand to shake hands with Stalin and, to my amazement, Stalin took my head in his two hands and gave me a large kiss! I swallowed my astonishment and, when he turned up his face for a return kiss, I delivered it.

This evening with Stalin and the inner circle of the Soviet Government seems almost unbelievable in retrospect, and I should have difficulty in convincing myself that it was a reality if I had not on returning to my hotel awakened my secretary and dictated the salient facts to him. Moreover, the next day shortly before my departure Litvinov told me that the property in the park should be ours if we wished to have it.

Alas, his astonishment wasn't the only thing Bullitt swallowed. When he kissed Stalin back, so did his boss. So did America. We've gotten over our Stalin crush - but not our FDR crush. What's one more degree of separation? To a virus? The virus is in us yet, albeit in its late, bureaucratic form.

No, America in 2012 is not crackling with revolutionary fire. Anything but! Neither was Russia in 1988, despite its rulers' best efforts. It's hard to start a fire when there's nothing left to burn. It's equally unfortunate that Monticello in Moscow was never built - it would have been the finest possible homage to America's founding Jacobin. Had enough revolution yet, America? Whose streets? Our streets!

But in some ways the worst part of the story is that the Bullitt letter records the highest level of "intimacy" ever achieved between US and USSR, and nor was it our choice to pull away. Au contraire! From day one, the Soviet tactic with their American patrons was like that of an alpha female with her hareem of beta males - constantly flirting but never actually putting out. The "inner gang" was quite conscious of their sovereignty and their need to retain it. They saw quite clearly that if they went down the Monticello in Moscow path, they would just be America's wife. America has never had any shortage of wives.

Naturally, each such rejection only stimulated the "wise men" of American diplomacy (all of whom spent the rest of the '30s pleading with Stalin to let them lick his balls again) to further efforts of contemptible affection. Only after WWII did it finally dawn on our best and brightest that no such marriage could ever never happen.

To our official historians, this breakup is called the "Cold War," and all those episodes of American progressivism serenading Russian progressivism with boombox held high are swept under the carpet as "naivete." (Or sometimes, with amusing consistency, as "realism.") Dear professors, the terms you're looking for are "Anglo-Soviet split" and "freshman homo crush."

Bullitt himself finally soured on Stalin's hawtness and, as a result, was pushed out of the New Deal's inner circle in the early '40s (but not before setting up World War II by, at least if we can believe Joe Kennedy, orchestrating the British guarantee to Poland). There was no shortage of Achesons, Hisses and Hopkinses to replace him. I have of course elided all the actual substantive details of Bullitt's intimate diplomacy with Stalin, which largely center around the New Dealers' desire to provide political, economic and military protection for their "Soviet experiment." This twisted, dysfunctional oyabun-kobun relationship did not begin in 1933, nor did it end in 1945. But I digress.

In any case, while no reminder should be necessary, I thought I'd pair the Bullitt letter with a story, probably but not certainly true, from the recently published memoir of one Fyodor Mochulsky,Gulag Boss - the title says it all:

The new boss was a lean man, somewhere around thirty years old, with combed-back light hair and energetic facial features. He had a long, skinny nose with a protuberance, and his thin lips were usually pursed together tightly. His movements were sharp, and his judgments were categorical.

His dugout was right next to mine, so there was nowhere to go to get away from him. And as soon as he began to drink, he would come to me, sit for hours and recount the details of how he had been sentenced to the death penalty. It almost drove me mad, but there was no way to get out of it. All around us, there was only the dark night and the tundra.

I would be glad to forget his stories, but you can't order away memories. Here are some of the things he told me.

To the question of how he had gotten himself into such unusual work, he told me that when he had been demobilized from the army, he had been given a security job at Butyrka prison in Moscow. One day, the prison's private vehicle arrived at the prison's courtyard with a contingent of arrested men. As it happened, the gates to the inner courtyard would not unlock, so they opened the doors of the vehicle in the outer courtyard and let the prisoners out. One of the prisoners noticed that the outer gates to the prison were still hanging open, and he took off running. As the security guard on duty, my unit boss at that moment had been standing next to the gates. When he saw what was happening, he did not hesitate. He drew out the sword that hung at his side and stabbed, right into the spine, the prisoner who was trying to escape.

The Butyrka guards who had carelessly left open the courtyard gates were punished. The security officer (our current unit boss) had prevented the prisoner's escape. For his decisive action, he was offered a transfer to a new job. At this new job, he would be carrying out "special commissions," that is, he would work as an executioner, shooting the enemies of Soviet power. He agreed to the transfer, and after some special training, he was sent with his new specialty to the ancient Russian city of Uglich.

For days at a time, he said, from mission to mission, he sat around doing nothing. He rested. Then, when the prison had accumulated a large number of condemned prisoners, the authorities would set an execution date. A specially trusted group from the security department of Uglich's prison was then sent out to carefully select a place in the woods and dig a pit. The pit was guarded until the executions took place. Starting at night and working until the morning, the prison officials would transport the condemned prisoners in a closed truck to this pit. Besides the security men and the person who would ensure that the executions took place, he said, there was always a doctor on hand. It was his duty to certify the death and write up the necessary documents.

One at a time, they led a condemned prisoner from the truck to the edge of the pit, and forced him to get on his knees with his face toward the pit. The executioner than shot him in the back of the head, and the dead man fell in. From the blow to the head, the executioner told me, the body would turn over facing up, and straighten up on the bottom of the pit. The doctor then went down into the pit and certified that the body was dead. Then they went to retrieve the next condemned prisoner.

He told me that from time to time, there was a prisoner who would not do what he was told and go submissively to the edge of the pit. In these cases, the security guys had to help out, and the job for the executioner would be more complicated.

When the mission was finished and the pit was filled, they covered it with soil and tried to make it look unobtrusive. After every mission, he told me, he got drunk and tried not to think about what he had done until the next time they called. For a long time, though, he was convinced that his job was important and honorable, because he was destroying the enemies of Soviet power. He believed that not everyone could be as trusted as he was with such a job.

But then one day, he had to shoot a fourteen-year-old girl. The executioner was told right before he had to kill her that not only was she the daughter of an "enemy of the people," she was also a "German spy." Suddenly and involuntarily, questions sprang to his mind. He was to kill a fourteen-year-old girl in an ancient Russian small town far from the front, in a place that had no classified establishments? Where had this adolescent girl done her spying, and for whom?

When they brought her to the execution place, she held herself up firmly and was silent. But when they led her to the pit, she spoke up. She said that she did not understand why they were depriving her of her life. "Even Stalin said that children do not answer for their parents, so why me?" she asked. She was unaware, he added, that she was also accused of being a "German spy."

In the words of my unit boss, after this execution he drank himself into a stupor so profound that he felt nothing. Soon he was sent to a hospital for crazy people.

84 Comments:

Whittaker Chambers' Witness, a remarkable book, says the same thing about the FDR administration pretty plainly. At the height of WW2, Chambers went to the top levels of government, and an FBI official patiently took notes of everything Chambers remembered about the Soviet spy network. He later learned that nobody in the executive branch wanted to touch the case. Why not? Well, we can only assume, because it would be counterproductive to their goals!

Today, Chambers is our only source for anything about that spy network, because all its other members were killed or pleaded the fifth (or, in the case of Hiss, pleaded "I don't recall"). And ask your parents, ask your grandparents-- the only thing anyone in the general public can remember about the Chambers-Hiss case is that damn pumpkin. What it revealed about the fragility of America's commitment to freedom in that era? Psssh, whatever.

Apparently Bullitt wised up enough to adopt the UR line on Wilson: "Freud's view of Wilson was that of a naive American politician whose foreign policy ideas were driven by religious fanaticism." ~ la Wik

I've never understood why you feel so attached to VFR. I suppose it's mostly because they see through two of UR's three basic lies about modern America, where as Fox News/National Review only get one. Still, the self-righteous siege mentality on display there is so bullet-proof I would feel more hopeful proselytizing among fundamentalist Muslims.

Not to be disrespectful and bring up the horse race on a blog dedicated to democracy's demise, but your (excellent) line about preferring the comforting lies of the past to the sinister ones of the present really crystallized the reasons for Newt's success. That Mr. Auster believes (passionately) that Romney is better than Newt is just another indication that there is no hope for such as them at the current time.

Finally, though you didn't say anything directly about him, I think you're generally too hard on Kennan. At the time of the Moscow trip he was not yet 30, and had spent the last decade around elites (communists) at school and in the foreign service. That he ever figured out what the hell was going on is a testament to his independence of mind and character.

Foseti made the same point, but in the form of a question- Is America a communist country? and I'll give the same answer I did there.

By all the evidence, and the vast influence of communists, it's easy to answer "yes". But as warm as the feelings are of our rulers for communism, they are not actually communists themselves. They admire and are perfectly comfortable with them, but they are not themselves communists.

The system- the Cathedral- this thing of theirs, whatever the hell you want to call it- was in the historical period discussed old, vast and powerful. But it did not control the entire earth, and there were vast areas it could not hope to control. The Anglophone commercial elite had the British Empire, North America and its colonies, but not Eastern Europe, Asia, some of Africa, or Latin America.

These areas were all controlled by local elites that were not Protestant and not businessmen. To the system, not acceptable. The system couldn't wipe these people out, but local communist insurgencies could. So for any society they couldn't get influence otherwise, a communist takeover was permitted or encouraged.

No Protestant country ever went communist- with the exception of East Germany, I don't know the Catholic/Protestant ratio there. No former British colony ever went communist.

Local elites elswhere having been exterminated, and the populations impoverished and demoralized, Russia, Asia and to some extent Latin America have been softened for capitalist exploitation. That girl at Foxconn doesn't need to sleep, you need your new IPhone!

This seems a good place to recommend a primary source I have mentioned before. Charles R. Crane's Institute for Current World Affairs sens a young John Hazard to study law in the USSR. Bullitt makes several appearances as do a bunch of big names as this guy Forrest Gumps his way through the great terror, never failing to believe the official line of hidden counter-revolutionary forces. You have to subscribe and I can't excerpt, but it is free.

John Hazed later became this guy:

http://www.johnhazardinstitute.org/

"History & BackgroundThe Institute is named for John Newbold Hazard who, fresh out of Harvard Law School, was sent by a small international-affairs foundation (The Institute of Current World Affairs, or ICWA) to the Soviet Union in 1934, the year after its revolutionary government was recognized by the United States. He returned to become a seminal professor of International Law at Columbia Law School, a founder of the Russian Institute (now the Harriman Institute) at Columbia University, a consummate U.S.-Soviet negotiator (Lend-Lease) during World War II and a continuing bridge of U.S.-Russian negotiation and understanding until his death in 1985. The Executive Director and many of the Trustees were his lifelong friends and associates."

Garet Garrett-Worse outwitted were those who kept trying to make sense of the New Deal from the point of view of all that was implicit in the American scheme, charging it therefore with contradiction, fallacy, economic ignorance, and general incompetence to govern...but it never intended to make that kind of sense. Its meaning was revolutionary and it had no other. You do not defend a world that is already lost. When was it lost? That you cannot say precisely. We know only that it was surrendered peacefully, without a struggle, almost unawares...There it is, and there it will remain until, if ever, it shall be re-conquered. Certainly government will never surrender it without a struggle.

Anon> FDR wasn't a communist. As far as I can tell he had no coherent ideology. He just wanted power, and guys like Henry Hopkins gave it to him, while pushing their own agenda on the side. That's the real tragedy of the whole thing, the US went communist accident, because FDR was too busy playing at being Principes to care.

"America infected Russia"Bullshit, as expected. John Reed went to Russia after revolution had already broken out and then acted as propagandist. Let's ignore Lenin, Stalin, the whole Bolshevik party, it's all because of John Reed. The same absurd logic behind blaming the communism brought from the pale of settlement on assimilation toward Brahmins.

Bullitt's account is a big yawn. He seems to have been a symp as a young man, but the excerpt doesn't actually contain much of interest. Ambassadors are supposed to be on good terms with their hosts (Kennan's pissing of them off is the exception that proves the rule, as he apparently wanted to be removed from the country). Bullitt wasn't responsible for FDR's stance toward the Soviets, which is why he was removed when he became hostile to them. And even here the American interest in war in the east is reasonable. Like spandrell says, Joseph Davies sounds like the much more interesting character.

I know your fondness for sodomy metaphors, but you aspire to provide reactionary enlightenment rather than slashfic. Predictions or beliefs held by people in the past which we now have better means to evaluate make for good dramatic irony. The customs of the past viewed through a post-gaylib lens do not.

Gabe Ruth, what are the three basic lies again? Also, I believe Mencius acknowledged once that he had gotten Kennan wrong (as did Auster, regarding immigration). Your defence of Kennan also sounds more fitting of Bullitt. Kennan was already a fan of the Habsburgs, and I've never heard of him being sympathetic toward communism (although in his old age he fantasized about Soviet infantry taking out hippies). Before diplomatic relations were even established and he set foot in the country he was predicting that Soviet communism would eventually exhaust itself. It was actually in his later years that he reacted against certain hawkish intepretations of his containment doctrine, and was attacked by Solzhenitsyn for his critique of taking a moralistic line on the Soviets.

Thrasymachus, a plausible answer but we should provide a link to Foseti's thread. My answer is along the lines of Walter Block. "Can you tell the difference between a carpet and a urinal? Then don't come in my house." The actual inhabitants of communist countries can tell the difference between communism and a welfare state.

"No Protestant country ever went communist- with the exception of East Germany, I don't know the Catholic/Protestant ratio there. No former British colony ever went communist."There seems to be a correlation with the Hajnal line.

Joseph Ebbecke, after the first world war the Soviets were also helping the Germans remilitarize.

Michael Tint, FDR did seem to have some ideological anti-colonialism to him. Although much of that could just be a mask for edging out the old great powers of their colonies, whether France's Vietnam or the UK's Kenya (with both old colonialists fighting a proxy war with each other over Biafra, mostly out of spite).

I went to your blog once and really liked it, but can it actually be that you've not read Antony Sutton's Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution?

http://www.reformed-theology.org/html/books/bolshevik_revolution/

It's posted in it's totality and the price is right. Solve your problem tonight. I don't know if MM or Foseti have ever posted it, but it's a good quick and dirty guide to how internationalist universalism actually worked a hundred years ago.

Sutton follows the money, and the money flows from Manhattan to Moscow, from industrialists to Bolsheviks. This cannot be coincidental. He doesn't mention John D. Rockefeller, drunk at a party, claiming to own a hundred million acres of russian land, because there's no good citation for that, but what he does cite is damning.

"Historian George Kennan noted that Schiff helped finance revolutionary propaganda during the Russo-Japanese war and revolution of 1905. The Jewish Communal Register of New York City noted that "Mr. Schiff has always used his wealth and his influence in the best interests of his people. He financed the enemies of autocratic Russia and used his financial influence to keep Russia from the money market of the United States." Henry Wickham Steed, the chief editor of The Times during the period, argued that this aid went beyond the Kerensky regime, stating that "the prime movers [of the Bolshevik revolution] were Jacob Schiff, Warburg, and other international financiers, who wished above all to bolster up the Jewish Bolshevists in order to secure a field for German and Jewish exploitation of Russia." The Hoover Institution scholar, Antony Sutton, who specialized in the role of Western Technological and financial transfers in building up the Soviet State, noted that the role of Schiff's firm of Kuhn, Loeb, & Co. in supporting the bolsheviks continued beyond the revolution, writing that "there is a report in the State Department files that names Kuhn, Loeb & Co. (the long established and important financial house in New York) as the financier of the First Five Year Plan. See U. S. State Dept. Decimal File, 811.51/3711 and 861.50 FIVE YEAR PLAN/236.""

"After more agitating around western Europe, Trotsky set sail for New York, where he worked as a journalist on the Russian Communist newspaper Novy Mir, out of their offices at 177 St. Mark's Place on the Lower East Side -- right in the heart of the Jewish section of Manhattan. Novy Mir (New World) was owned by two Communist Jews named Weinstein and Brailovsky. According to the New York police, who monitored Trotsky's activities, his main associates during this period were Emma Goldman and Alexander Berman.

Things were starting to heat up in Mother Russia in 1917, and Trotsky sensed that the time was ripe for another Soviet takeover bid. But finance for the revolution was essential. Oddly, these so-called enemies of Capitalism had no difficulty whatsoever in raising vast amounts of capital from Jewish financiers around the World. Trotsky worked on Jacob H. Schiff, who it was, later admitted, poured $20 million of Kuhn Loeb bank money into the projected Bolshevik takeover. "Parvus", Trotsky's room-mate at the executive suite of the Peter-Paul prison, was himself a wealthy coal broker, and he was off in the Balkans making deals on behalf of the Imperial German government. Naturally, being a good businessman with loyalty only to the dollar, he had no qualms about trading with any enemy power during wartime.

In Scandinavia, another Jewish banker, Olaf Aschberg, was busy putting together an investment portfolio to propel the nascent Bolshevik state into financial bliss.

On 26 March 1917 Trotsky embarked from New York, for Russia He was accompanied by a good many Marxist soldiers-of-fortune from the Lower East Side, plus a large amount of gold courtesy of Jacob Schiff."

Well completely absolving the Russians of any revolutionary fever is stupid. Its the land of Tolstoy and Bakunin, and anarchists killed a Tsar. And absolving the international Jews is just falsehood, they paid for the thing as it has been said.

Still its hard to say that America wasn't complicit when it torpedoed the allied troops effort during the Civil War, and they fucking built Stalin's industrial base.

HNU, AGW, and KFM. I know you've defended Kennan in the past, I didn't know you convinced him. How much help were the Soviets to the Germans pre-WW2?

I was a little surprised you even bothered to shoot this little Bambi of a post, but the commenters present a much more compelling cast of characters than Mr. Reed. Still, as far as America creating the Bolsheviks, intellectually, Mr. Moldbug overstates things. The universal brotherhood of man coupled with the rejection of the Almighty occurred in many places independently, for reasons our host has capably demonstrated.

On the other hand, I completely disagree that a government must keep a gulag as terrible as the Soviet's to be called communist. Rather, I look at the long term effect on the citizenry. Whether you think they are just demented do gooders or evil masterminds, you can't argue with results.

Thanks for the Joseph Davies lead. La Wik says he turned the other way when imported American auto-workers were disappeared, which is the sort of thing that should be better known.

Thrasymachus, it's a cute theory, but you're question begging a little. I guess you're going with the evil mastermind thing.

Looking Backward was apparently a big hit in Russia with Tolstoy arranging the first translation.

Bellamyism was also an indirect influence via Daniel DeLeon, one of the original officers of the NY Nationalist Club and later founder of the SLP and IWW. DeLeon's pamphlets were probably brought to Lenin by Boris Reinstein who came over on the Morgan-sponsored Root Commission and stayed on as personal secretary to Lenin. Reinstein was an SLP official and once ran on the same ticket as DeLeon. Historical interpretation is a delicate thing, but can we at least agree this is pretty weird?

Lenin also apparently credited De Leon with describing the structure of the Soviet State. DeLeon was, of course, just expanding on Bellamy.

@ Joseph Ebbecke: The Soviet Union, not being a signatory to the Versailles Treaty, helped Germany re-arm in violation of that treaty, beginning in the 1920s.

According to Wikipedia,

"The Soviet Union played a critical role in German re-armament. In exchange for German military instructors and arms development collaboration, Lenin's War Commisar, Leon Trotsky, entered into an agreement with Hans Von Seeckt to provide a remote area where German arms could be developed and training could be conducted out of sight of the Great Powers. The Germans manufactured tanks, shells, aircraft, and even poisonous gas in the Soviet towns of Lipetsk, Saratov, Kazan, and Tula. In exchange, Soviet commanders, selected by Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevski, were trained in German military academies."

The only way to visit 19th-century America is with a European traveler.

No one should ever need a European to explore 18th* and 19th* Century America because American history is simple to understand. America, which was founded as a paradise for elite white business owners, can have its history divided into only three economic structural models (Europe's history is much harder to analyze because Europe is the history of elite oligarchical - not fascistic - governing structures, whereas America is just the history of a corporation):

There's nothing really to revise because there isn't any mystery about what led to the war, at least once one looks beyond both Confederate and Union post-war propaganda.

The Union didn't fight the Civil War to appease the abolitionists. The abolitionists were much too fringe to have driven America toward fratricide.

The Union fought to satisfy the constituent members of the Republican Party whose industrialist members demanded Hamiltonian laissez-faire triumph across the West over the South's preferred governing structure of slavery expanionist Jeffersonian laissez-faire.

Neither the Confederacy nor the Union were fighting for any particularly high minded ideals; the war was simply a conflict of economic interest between the North and the South over the future of economic development of the American West.

The vaunted Confederate writers are just giving a state's rights moral gloss to the mostly economic motivations that led to the South's secession from the Union just as the victorious Union would later use the issue of slavery to wrap its purely economic motivations for war in a humanitarian gloss.

Certainly, whenever Lincoln proclaimed he had the best interests of the oppressed slave at heart the notion was correctly jeered by just about every European diplomat from Lisbon to Moscow as a moral figleaf to keep the European from realizing Lincoln was fighting to preserve Northern Industrial economic interests.

As Thrasymachus and TGGP have pointed out Communism was not an American import to Russia and America has not imported Communism from Russia.

The Democrat party is not, and never has been Communist. The Democrats like the left in most Protestant nations is progressive liberal, which is an entirely different species of political structure.

On the downside, the progressives are probably

The word "Communism" itself is derived from the Communes of the French Revolution - not the American War of Secession.

Furthermore, anti-Tsarist revolutionary agitation had been simmering in Russia at least as far back as the French Revolution, if not earlier.

When Napoleon (accidentally) invaded Russia in 1812 to punish Alexander I for leaving France's continental blockade of British merchandise, the Tsar was afraid the French advance would lead to a revolt in Ukraine and that Napoleon would take advantage of the revolt by supporting Ukrainian independence from the Russian Empire much as Napoleon had broken off the Duchy of Warsaw from Russia.

So here we see revolutionary sentiment in Russia preceded the 1917 Revolution by a full century, even when America was still an irrelevant colonial outpost that could not have "exported" Revolution to Russia.

Communist and violent parties in America (and the Protestant nations in general) especially have never garnered much support from the electorate.

Of course, the downside to Protestant/American progressivism is that the Protestant left may be nuttier than the old Communist left.

Gavin Newsom, who is Fuhrer of our Supreme Blog Leader's city, seriously believes African blacks have the same cognitive potential as Europeans.

But did Stalin believe blacks have the same intellectual potential as Europeans?

When the Cold War Communist leadership cheered on a "people's" revolt in the Middle East as America has just done in Egypt and Libya, was the Politburu foolhardy enough to send State TV mouthpiece Ludmyla Loganova to Tahrir square to have a body cavity exam by the yokels, er, locals?

No evil masterminds needed, just a powerful class of people seeing things a certain way. In the minds of these people communism was not the best system, but they didn't see in Russia and Eastern Europe, Asia or Latin America anything they regarded as legitimate civilization, and replacing what was there with communism was an improvement.

pdxr13 >>British colonies gone communist: Rhodesia, South Africa.

Unless you consider Zanu-PF as a "duly-elected mono-party Democracy". No, Bob and Nelson were pure-Red, for their whole adult lives. <<

I thought a little bit before making a categorical statement, but this is the internet and everybody talks out of their ass anyway, so why should I be any different? Point taken although I don't think SA or even Zimbabwe is really full communist.

TUJ >>The Union fought to satisfy the constituent members of the Republican Party whose industrialist members demanded Hamiltonian laissez-faire triumph across the West over the South's preferred governing structure of slavery expanionist Jeffersonian laissez-faire.<<

Free soil whites didn't want slavery in the West, slavery (or even any free blacks) just wasn't part of their economic civilization. I try to explain to Hunter Wallace I'm not a nagger lover but he just won't buy it.

Thanks for the links. So the Bolsheviks provided a space where the Germans could rearm & develop resources they already had. In the'20's it seems more reasonable for Prussians to train Bolsheviks than the other way 'round.

Wiki's source for the Trotsky deal is The American Heritage History of World War II, C.L. Sulzberger.

Sutton follows the money, and the money flows from Manhattan to Moscow, from industrialists to Bolsheviks. This cannot be coincidental.

Sutton also finds the money flowing to the Nazis and FDR.

He doesn't simply argue like some here that the Americans were the original and true Bolsheviks and therefore funded the Bolsheviks or something.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_Sutton

"Sutton's next three major published books Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution, Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler and Wall Street and FDR detailed Wall Street's involvement in the Bolshevik Revolution (in order to destroy Russia as an economic competitor and turn into "a captive market and a technical colony to be exploited by a few high-powered American financiers and the corporations under their control") as well as its decisive contributions to the rise of Adolf Hitler and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose policies he assessed as being essentially the same, namely "corporate socialism" planned by the big corporations. Sutton concluded that this was all part of the economic power elites' "long-range program of nurturing collectivism" and fostering "corporate socialism" in order to ensure "monopoly acquisition of wealth", because it "would fade away if it were exposed to the activity of a free market". In his view, the only solution to prevent such abuse in the future was that "a majority of individuals declares or acts as if it wants nothing from government, declares it will look after its own welfare and interests", or specifically that "a majority finds the moral courage and the internal fortitude to reject the something-for-nothing con game and replace it by voluntary associations, voluntary communes, or local rule and decentralized societies". In Sutton's own words he was "persecuted but never prosecuted" for his research and subsequent publication of his findings."

Thrasymachus, are you basically extending the Sutton argument backwards in time a little?

So communism was a scorched earth policy designed to destroy the parts of the world not under whoever's (Puritans? Jews? WASPs? I'm not sure what powerful class you've got your eye on that managed to maintain a control of events and a coherent strategy across continents and centuries) domination, and liberalism is the preferred method of domination in places they actually have to live?

TUJ, are you Jonah Goldberg? I have seen the light! Gavin Newsome is not a dirty commie, but a national socialist, just like the Penn State student body! They only say they hate Nazi's to throw people off. Speaking of ignoring historical events, WW2 was probably overrated.

For people who subscribe to the "some powerful class raised up the Bolsheviks in order to eliminate Russia as an economic competitor", que? The sick man of Europe? It may have been impossible to conquer, but I have a lot of trouble believing any class saw it as a threat to commercial dominance.

Anon> FDR wasn't a communist. As far as I can tell he had no coherent ideology. He just wanted power, and guys like Henry Hopkins gave it to him, while pushing their own agenda on the side. That's the real tragedy of the whole thing, the US went communist accident, because FDR was too busy playing at being Principes to care.

OK, so that phrase was used in reference to the Ottoman Empire. That's a little embarrassing. Still, by any account Russia was a backward country and the assistance they needed to industrialize has been highlighted already.

Free soil whites didn't want slavery in the West, slavery (or even any free blacks) just wasn't part of their economic civilization.

Yes, the threat of slavery in the West was competition for white settlers and one of the conflicting economic reasons that led to war. Another cause of the war was free trade, with the North being protectionist and the South for free trade.

One reason the British and French governments of the time were rooting for a Confederate victory was because the CSA would have been much more accommodating to European imports.

This is also why Lincoln was worried Europe might intervene on the side of the Confederates.

I find it fascinating how internet "reactionaries" are unable to view the political spectrum outside of their extremely narrow philosophical interpretations without throwing hissy fits.

Why are you so resistant to the idea that there may be different forms of liberalism just as there are different forms of conservatism?

Classical American conservatism is distinct from continental conservatism because, among many other reasons, American conservatives were isolationist pre-FDR while European conservatives were traditionally militaristic to varying degrees of bloodlust.

If American conservatism is distinct from the Contintel Royalist type, then why wouldn't their liberalism be distinct?

It may have been impossible to conquer, but I have a lot of trouble believing any class saw it as a threat to commercial dominance.

Tsarist Russia's industrialization was considered to be a major threat to Second Reich.

One of the reasons the German military command started the war in 1914 was because they wanted to fight a major before Russia, with its massive and growing population, and rapidly industrializing economy could surpass Germany in industrial might.

Also, regarding German Jews support for the Bolsheviks, they were doing so with the permission of the German high command which also covertly supported the Russian Revolution so that they could knock Russia out of the war and throw their Eastern Forces at France before America could intervene on behalf of the Allies.

The German Jews also helped disseminate pro-Kaiser propaganda through outfits such as "The Committee for the East".

German Jewish support for the Central Powers led to accusations German Jews were acting as the Kaiser's agents.

Robert Goldberg, a German Jew who helped finance DW Griffith's Birth of a Nation, had his film The Spirit of '76 confiscated by American police because there was paranoia about both recent German American immigrants and German Jewish immigrants who might have dual loyalties to the Second Reich.

I'm sure, somewhere, right now in alternate universe where the Kaiser won the war, there are internet conspiracy theorists eagerly typing away about how 20th century Prussian militarism is a vehicle for Jewish interests.

Southern conservatism was militaristic, e.g. Colonel Sanders-stlye aristos. Pre-war Southern conservatism was not coincidentally the only real American descendant of European conservatism. The rest were generally descendants of European radicalism.

TUJ,It's not fascinating, but it is mildly amusing how blinkered internet pedants can be. Thus we have the guy who says Big Ten rallies = Nuremburg rallies decrying my hissy fits, and the guy who sees said Big Ten students, American conservatives (whatever he means by that), and the mayor of San Francisco as Nazis decries my inability to make distinctions between different political factions.

I'm not even really sure what we're arguing about, to be honest. You seem to have a problem using the term communism expansively. If you prefer, we can say totalitarian collectivism (TC).

TUJ writes: "I'm sure, somewhere, right now in alternate universe where the Kaiser won the war, there are internet conspiracy theorists eagerly typing away about how 20th century Prussian militarism is a vehicle for Jewish interests."

That was a common view in Britain before and during World War I. For examples, see John Buchan's Hannay novels, particularly "Greenmantle" and "Mr. Standfast."

Was not the purpose of the Balfour Declaration to attract Jews away from their historic support of the Central Powers? German nationalism began as a liberal movement in the early nineteenth century, and was widely considered as such abroad. Jews had good reason to feel sympathy for the empire of Wilhelm I, which removed their civil disabilities. Not Germany, but France, which had persecuted Dreyfus, and Tsarist Russia, with its Black Hundreds, were the principal loci of European anti-Semitism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

I was listening to a Rothbard lecture the other day and was surprised when he casually mentioned that Kuhn, Loeb, Jake Schiff's group, was pro-German, but now can't remember if that was in the 30s or during the war.

> So here we see revolutionary sentiment in Russia preceded the 1917 Revolution by a full century, even when America was still an irrelevant colonial outpost that could not have "exported" Revolution to Russia.

Sounds like garden-variety volkisch separatism, rather than 'revolution' as I think of it -- did these Ukraini chaps care in any considerable degree how Russia was to live and develop (defining Russia their way, ie exclusive of Ukraine)?

> Wall Street's involvement in the Bolshevik Revolution (in order to destroy Russia as an economic competitor

Lol... I practically rate Russian art higher than 'ours', but they aren't exactly an economic powerhouse -- one must realize that a large fraction of the economy there today is resource extraction.

In WWI, the German occupiers experienced a burst of chauvinistic sentiments when they got a look at the standard of living. Some say this augmented the ongoing feeling that Russia 'ought' (in whatever sense) to become a colony of an overcrowded Germany.

Of course that doesn't mean people can't misperceive Russia's economic potential. But I kind of doubt it was a huge destination for international capital at that time.

Germany might have been worried about Russia's industrialization, but then Germany shared a long border with it, in addition to being surrounded by other powers and having a memorable history of paying the price (30 Years' War).

Furthermore, anti-Tsarist revolutionary agitation had been simmering in Russia at least as far back as the French Revolution, if not earlier.

When Napoleon (accidentally) invaded Russia in 1812 to punish Alexander I for leaving France's continental blockade of British merchandise, the Tsar was afraid the French advance would lead to a revolt in Ukraine and that Napoleon would take advantage of the revolt by supporting Ukrainian independence from the Russian Empire much as Napoleon had broken off the Duchy of Warsaw from Russia.

So here we see revolutionary sentiment in Russia preceded the 1917 Revolution by a full century, even when America was still an irrelevant colonial outpost that could not have "exported" Revolution to Russia.

Russia had a long history of peasant revolts. Just 35 years before Napoleon invaded, the Russian government had serious trouble suppressing the Pugachev revolt (Pugachev had proclaimed an end to serfdom). It was natural for the Tsar to fear that Napoleon would free the serfs. To think that such revolts were in any way "communist" is absurd. Pugachev was a petit bourgeois peasant, not a proto-Marxist. He did not want to overthrow the institution of Tsardom; in fact he pretended to be the Tsar! Therefore the claim that "revolutionary sentiment in Russia preceded the 1917 Revolution by a full century" is false.

I'd be fascinated to learn what was "accidental" about Napoleon's invasion.

I'd be fascinated to learn what was "accidental" about Napoleon's invasion.

It was "accidental" in the sense Napoleon didn't intend to advance deep into Russia proper and occupy the country.

His original plan was to lure the Tsar's Army of the West into a head to engagement somewhere in Central Europe, or possibly Ukraine or the Balts, and destroy the Russian army in a gigantic maneuver warfare operation that force Alexander I back into obeying the Continental System.

Lol... I practically rate Russian art higher than 'ours', but they aren't exactly an economic powerhouse

Russian industrialization was considered a long term threat to Imperial Germany. In the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, Russia was rapidly industrializing and they were expected to eventually catchup to France, Britain and Germany in economic development.

The reason Russia was still economically backwards compared to the Western European powers at the start of WWI was because Russia had only recently begun to develop a prosperous middle class in contrast to Western Europe where a robust middle class had already been established.

That was a longterm consideration for the Kaiser's military command.

As far as short term considerations were concerned, the German government supported the Bolshevik's because they wanted to knock Tsarist Russia out of the war so Germany's Russian front troops could be sent to defeat France before America could intervene on behalf of the Allied Powers.

Russia had a long history of peasant revolts. Just 35 years before Napoleon invaded, the Russian government had serious trouble suppressing the Pugachev revolt (Pugachev had proclaimed an end to serfdom). It was natural for the Tsar to fear that Napoleon would free the serfs. To think that such revolts were in any way "communist" is absurd.

Events such as the Pugavech revolt have everything to do with all European revolutionary movements because revolutionary socialism itself came from the class war tensions of Europe in the 18th and 19th Centuries.

Let's return to TGGP's and Thrasymachus' discussion about the paucity of success revolutionary socialism has had in Protestant countries.

The reason the Protestant nations were most resistant to Communism (and related socialist movements) compared the either Catholic, or Culturally Catholic, nations was because the Protestant nations moved earliest satisfying the aspirations of their growing middle classes with strong property rights.

In contrast to the Protestant nations, the Catholic and Orthodox nations suffered the worst types of revolutions because they were the slowest to abolish feudalistic property rights systems.

It's not a coincidence that the only culturally Catholic nation where free market capitalism is most highly regarded, Switzerland, is also the culturally Catholic nation which has been without an aristocracy for the longest period of time.

The dissatisfaction of Russian serfs which led to the Pugavech revolt is directly connected to the dissatisfaction which led the Russian Revolution in 1917 and the French Revolution in 1789.

Volkish separtism, AKA European nationalism, was leftist prior to the middle of the 19th Century because European monarchies all controlled ethnically diverse populations, which the French Revolutionaries used to destabilize other European nations in the hope of overthrowing every King in Europe.

Prior to the mid-19th Century, European kings and emperors invaded and traded territories that they thought would improve their kingdom or Empire's economic or geopolitical position.

Annexing or dismembering territories, purely for ethnic reasons, was *relatively* less common prior to the "Consolidation Wars" of the second half of the 19th century and afterwards where ideas about pan-nations on ethnicity (such as pan-Slavism) led to large consolidations of European sub-ethnic groups.

Nationalism was opposed by Metternich and Castlereagh in their concert of Europe because breaking European empires, such as the multi-ethnic Austrian Empire, could be exploited by leftist revolutionaries to topple European monarchs and potentially lead to war.

It was Metternich's fear of Nationalism that led him to oppose intervening on behalf of the Greeks during their wars of independence from the Ottoman Empire.

It was ultimately Bismarck who incorporated ethnic nationalism into European conservatism as a way to both unify the various German nations under Prussia and as a way to co-opt an old liberal policy platform.

My explanation of Jewish activity is exactly identical to the explanation of our Forum Fuhrer, Mencius. And Moldbug's position on Jewish behavior is, itself, closely related to Adolf Hitler's view of Jewish behavior.

The Moldbug position (which is the correct position) on Jewish behavior is that Jewish behavior is an exact imitation of elite gentile mores and political preferences, not a challenge to dominant gentile thinking.

Hitler, like Moldbug, also believed Jews were acting not as volkish outsiders but as rootless cosmopolitans who were adapted to modernity, though our Supreme Leader and Adolf Hitler differed on Jewish issues in certain respects.

In any event, I encourage you to abandon your absurd belief Jewish political activism is alien to gentile activism.

Instead, you should refer any Jewish Questions you may have to the most completely unbiased source on Jewish behavior in the form of Mencius Moldbug, rather than other energetic (but incorrect) Jew obsessed websites.

"The Thugs: There are people in every society–usually young males–with a propensity for aggression and violence. Insurgency attracts them since it is more prestigious and legitimate than crime, and has a better chance of gaining internal or external support. It offers them a chance to justify imposing their will on others. This is amplified when a nation has a long history of violence or major military demobilization which increases the number of thugs and puts many of them out of work. In many parts of the world, whole generations have never known a time without brutality and bloodshed. Sierra Leone is a perfect example of this. The RUF emerged from a group of young people from the slums of Freetown known for their antisocial behavior.[25] While this group sometimes provided violent muscle for politicians, it also served up the raw material for the RUF, leading Ibrahim Abdullah and Patrick Muana to label it the “revolt of the lumpenproletariat” (a word coined by Karl Marx to describe society’s lowest strata).[26] Thugs seldom create or lead insurgencies, but they do provide many of its foot soldiers."

WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES WALL OF TEXT WITHOUT SOURCES

Marxist historians have always been desperate to show that peasant revolts somehow indicated the revolutionary potential of the masses. However, peasant revolts were always utterly reactionary, as peasants were deeply attached to the land, religion, family, and way of life. Pugachev was no exception. He did not want to overthrow the Tsar, he wanted a GOOD Tsar.

We cannot take the fact that he is profiled by the Carnegie Endowment for Peace as sufficient evidence that Ahmed Maher is Cathedral-funded. They've profiled a wide cast of Egyptian characters from Salafists to leftists to UNites to military figures: http://egyptelections.carnegieendowment.org/category/personalities

If this is going to be an open thread, can I get someone to join me in pointing and laughing at this guy?

So there’s a methodology to studying those [mass protests]. The thing I loved about Occupy Wall Street was that for the first time I got to frigging be there. I couldn’t fly into Tiananmen Square and I missed the fall of the Berlin Wall. I regret that, but this one happened right here and I got to go there — not immediately, but straight after it happened — and feel the ambience of it.

Thanks again for the wikileaks link, but I didn't see where it said State was funding him (not implausible, but didn't seem explicit). The author plainly regards the April 6th movement as having an unrealistic plan and being the outside the mainstream opposition. However, USG did push the Egyptian government to release some activists.

Many of you have already heard of Ros-Lehtinen. The other GOP congresscritter mentioned in the cable is Frank Wolf, who apparently has blathered about human rights for some time.

There seems to be a strong undercurrent of seduction in a good deal of anecdotes of Stalin's interaction with ambassadors. A foreign policy of charm and affability.

"On September 29, Ribbentrop returned from his second Moscow conference with a German-Soviet frontier and friendship treaty which was to seal the fourth partition of Poland. At Hitler's table he recounted that he had never felt so much at ease as among Stalin's associates: "As if I were among old party comrades of ours, mein Fuhrer!" Hitler listened without a flicker of expression to this burst of enthusiasm on the part of the normally impassive Foreign Minister." -- Albert Speer, "Inside the Third Reich, Memoirs"

Were more than half the "Maoist soldiers" women? (And were many as hot as section commander Gautum? That would explain alot.)

What is the literacy rate in Nepal, and if it isn't zero, can they get to Wikipedia there (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maoism)? -Literacy rate = 58%; 18% of population is urbanized, so probably not a lot of internet access. 1% in 2005, according to la Wik.

Is there some reason the Nepalese cannot pick their northern neighbors brains on the subject of Maoism?

What does your average resident of Nepal make in a year? -2009 GNI per capita = 440 US$; 55% of population below int. poverty line of 1.25 US$/day; but 18% of govt. spending is on education, so things are looking up.

How does a Maoist have the gall to use the word "should", in any context? Power flows from the barrel of a gun, no? Why'd you give up yours, if there's still something that "should" be done for you?

On the other hand, the Nepalese strain of Maoism must be pathetically inept. A country with roughly the same population as Canada living in an area less than 2% of Canada's landmass, and they only killed 15000 in ten years? I have a feeling HBD was at work here, and the people of Nepal should be grateful for it.